Download Art History Weekly Sketchbook Research Topic List

Weekly Historical Research Topics
Assignment Parameters: 1) Make a historical entry into your sketchbook about each era of art history. Title
the page as seen in bold below, include dates, locations and particulars to help place the era chronologically in
history. Research each topic via the internet and all the available related pictorial images that contribute to
that week’s era of history. 2) Print out two 2D works and two 3D works (which include architecture) that
seem to represent the bolded eras best. Paste them into your sketchbook, label these works by title and artist.
3) Create a list of artist that worked during this particular timeframe in history, try to be as complete as
possible. Make your page interesting, each week’s entry has something very different to offer us as
artist.
Week 1- Prehistory: nonverbal history; nomadic lifestyle and its effects on making art; accessible tools and
materials; Western vs. non-Western Paleolithic/Neolithic artworks; agriculture’s effect on art; women of
prehistory: Venus of Willendorf
Week 2- Ancient Near East: objects for ritual, fertility, and life cycles; architecture functional and funerary;
polytheism and significant deities; pictures to words: Epic of Gilgamesh; order and power: Law Code of Hammurabi. And
Ancient Egypt: the gift of the Nile: cycles of death and rebirth; the afterlife: mummification, Book of the Dead;
Egyptian polytheism; divine right; pre-dynastic-ptolemaic; funerary architecture; status and depiction of human body;
Hatshepsut: female pharaoh; Amarna period; cross-cultural influences
Week 3- Aegean: Cycladic depictions of human body; Greek mythology& palace at Knossos; fresco process; Minoan
ceramics; Mycenaean civilization: fact vs. fiction (Schliemann); building materials and techniques; Mycenaean funerary
practices. And Ancient Greece: “Man is the measure of all things”; culture and politics; women in ancient Greece;
Greek Pantheon: significant deities; Geometric-Hellenistic styles in all media; power and authority; link between
mythology and politics; human body: stylized-idealized-naturalistic (the canon); order of architecture
Week 4- Etruscan/China: Neolithic>1st Empire: a contemporary lifestyle; architectural innovations; funerary
practices and artworks; comparison of figures to Greek; women and equality; Chinese culture vs. Western: everyday
objects, writing, funerary art. And Ancient Rome/South Asia: Indus Valley Civilization: power and rule: shifts in
authority and territory; writings of Virgil and Ovid; architectural innovations; entertainment; Roman pantheon vs.
Greek; sacred spaces; commemorative architecture: triumphal arch, etc.; portraits; four styles of mural painting; crosscultural influences; South Asian culture; Buddhism and art/architecture
Week 5- Early Christian and Byzantine Art/Developments in Buddhist Art: development of Christianity and
connections to Judaism and Islam; Christian literature, typology, and symbolism; division of East and West; basilica and
centrally planned religious architecture; Byzantine style; illuminated manuscripts; iconoclastic controversy; Buddhism in
China and India
Week 6- Early Middle Ages/Mesoamerica: Islamic culture and religious architecture; northern European art: AngloSaxon, Viking, Hiberno-Saxon styles and iconography; Beowulf; stylistic/regional characteristics of manuscript
illumination; Carolingian and Ottonian periods/styles; Mesoamerican art and culture: thriving civilizations, beliefs, and
artifacts. Celtic art, Book of Kells, cathedral architecture. And Romanesque: stylistic vs. historical; pilgrimage and relics;
feudalism and crusades; portal sculpture; regional variations; secular vs. religious: Bayeux Tapestry
Week 7- Gothic/Buddhist & Hindu Developments in East Asia: Abbot Suger and St. Denis: the beginning of the
Gothic style; height and light: reaching for the heavens; architectural innovations of Gothic style; messages in colored
light: stained-glass windows; guilds; scholasticism; portal sculpture; Canterbury Tales; spread of Gothic: regional
variations; Buddhist paradise sects: changes in Buddha; pagodas; Hinduism; the Hindu temple; the Hindu artist; other
Buddhist and Hindu temples around the world
Week 8- Pre- and Early Renaissance/Perspective in Asian Painting: rinascimento; classical influences; 14th-century
Italy; Cimabue vs. Giotto; Dante; surfaces and preparation; altarpieces; the master’s workshop; Saint Francis; good
government vs. bad government; the Black Death; International Gothic style; books of hours: accessible to the illiterate;
quattrocento; humanism; condottiere; Florence baptistery doors competition; Vasari; recognition of the artist;
the Medici; linear perspective; atmospheric perspective; Davids; architectural changes; oil painting; illusionism;
Platonic academy; North vs. Italy: regional variations; Northern altarpieces; portraiture/self-portraiture
Week 9- High Renaissance: political tension; uomo universale; leading artists; centrally planned: the circle in
architecture; Pope Julius II: religious patronage; observation of nature and landscape; sfumato; artists’ personalities;
changes in the style of the artist; combining humanism with religion; Venice; painting vs. sculpture and color vs.
drawing
Week 10- Mannerism and Later 16th Century Italy and Northern Europe: The Reformation and CounterReformation; figura serpentinata; Vasari on women artists; altering the classical in architecture; Loyola; mystic saints;
late 16th-century architectural developments; Erasmus; Luther; alchemy; Northern artists’ depictions of religious
subject matter; proverbs; printmaking; Northern portraiture
Week 11- Baroque/Mughal Art & Baroque: politics and science; nature, emotion, theater, and violence; undulating
architecture: geometric variations; Absolutism; Italian, French, Spanish, and English styles; Louis XIV; Baroque
sculpture; further illusionism and imitation; women artists of Baroque; Dutch East India Company and capitalism; crossinfluence of Mughal miniatures
Week 12- Rococo & 18th Century/ Neoclassicism: Late 18th & Early 19th Centuries: fantasy and the exotic;
chinoiserie; hotels and salons; the age of enlightenment; art theory and art history; elaborate architecture and interiors;
Palladian style: renewal of Gothic; American painting in late 18th century and European influences; the French
Revolution and Napoleon; from Rococo to Neoclassicism; satyrs and bacchantes; art in the service of the state; Oedipus;
American Independence
Week 13- Romanticism: The Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries: Romantic literature and language; return to
nature; music and poetry; historical events in France; watercolor; the salon; Hugo; aquatint; aesthetic of the sublime;
German
Sturm und Drang; Romanticism in the United States; folk art
Week 14- 19th-Century Realism: economic, social, and political revolutions of 19th century; Industrial Revolution; Karl
Marx and communism; Realism and literature; lithography; photography; European and American Realism; architecture
and sculpture; artistic political commentary
Week 15- Impressionism/Japanese Woodblock Printing: rejection by the academy: a group apart; properties of light;
urban renewal of Paris; influence of Japanese woodblocks; art for art’s sake: Impressionism on trial. And
Postimpressionism & Late 19th Century/Oceania: influence of Impressionism; color and brushstrokes; formal vs.
emotional approaches; simple forms; Divisionism; Gauguin and Oceanic influence; symbolism; aestheticism;
art nouveau; Vienna Secession; Freud and dreams
Week 16- Turn of the Century: Early Picasso, Fauvism, Expressionism, and Matisse/African Art and European
Avant-Garde: Picasso and Matisse; interest in African art; Fauvism: symbolist use of color; Expressionism: emotional
color; Matisse after Fauvism. And Cubism, Futurism and Related 20th-Century Styles: Precursors of Cubism;
Gertrude Stein; Analytic Cubism; collage and assemblage; Synthetic Cubism; Futurism; the Armory show; The Harlem
Renaissance; Suprematism; early 20th-century architecture; Frank Lloyd Wright, Falling Waters; international style; De
Stijl; the Bauhaus; United States and functionalism
Week 17- Dada, Surrealism, Fantasy & U.S. Between Wars/Hopi Kachinas: World War I’s effects on art; Dada; the
Cabaret Voltaire; the Ready-made; Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto; Surrealism; U.S. Regionalism and Social
Realism; photography; Mexican artists; American Abstraction; transcendental painting; self-taught artists. And
Abstract Expressionism: Hans Hofmann and Josef Albers; Hitler’s “degenerate art” show; Abstract Expressionism; art
critics and the avantgarde; action painting; influence of Navajo sand painting; acrylic; color field painting; figurative
abstraction; sculpture
Week 18- Pop Art, Op Art, Minimalism & Conceptualism: English pop art; U.S. pop art; op art; minimalism; light
as a medium; Beuys and Hesse: affected by WWII; Conceptualism. And Innovation and Continuity: Gov’t funding of
arts; controversial art; realism; new media; architecture: Postmodern; environmental art; urban art; feminist art; body
art; video art; installation art; performance art